The murky and dangerous exploits of a one-legged, impoverished soldier turned private investigator are unlikely to entice millions of children into the multiplex or, come to that, to sire a popular and lucrative studio tour. They may, however, provide JK Rowling with her next box office smash.

Several studios are understood to be bidding, but a spokesman for Rowling declined to discuss the matter, saying only: "I'm afraid that we're not commenting on the film rights situation for The Cuckoo's Calling."

After the revelation, the book, which Rowling wrote under the name Robert Galbraith, shot to No 1 in the UK hardback fiction charts last week, selling 17,662 copies in seven days.

Even before the leak it had received two offers from television production companies.

Rowling's writing as Galbraith has been compared to that of Lee Child, whose novel One Shot was recently made into a Hollywood film, Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike.

The Cuckoo's Calling follows the memorably named private investigator Cormoran Strike as he investigates the death of a supermodel. Soon, according to the blurb, "the case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man."

Although the publishers had originally billed the novel as a work based on Galbraith's "own experiences and those of his military colleagues", they were forced to come clean after it emerged that it had been written by Rowling.

"If sales were what mattered to me most, I would have written under my own name from the start, and with the greatest fanfare," she wrote.

The revelations have, however, had a dramatic effect. Rowling's publishers have reprinted 140,000 copies to meet demand; before Galbraith's cover was blown, The Cuckoo's Calling had sold just 1,500 copies.